I reached for a cracker, put a slice of cheese on it. It occurred to me I hadn’t eaten anything for hours.
“I don’t have the discs.”
“But do you know who took them?”
“You know a Clive Duncomb?”
She shook her head. “You mentioned him before, when you were looking up contacts at my father’s house.”
“Yeah. He works at Thackeray. Heads up security there. He and your father — he and his wife were friends with your dad and Miriam.”
Lucy repeated the name. “I know a few people out at Thackeray, given what I do. But the people I know are more in the academic end of things and—”
Lucy stopped herself.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know what the name was, but my father mentioned, I’m pretty sure, that he knew someone at the college who’d given him tips for when he was writing about the police. But this man wasn’t a security guard or anything. He was a policeman, or used to be.”
“That could be Duncomb,” I said. “He’s an ex-cop. Did he say much else about him?”
“I was over there once, and he happened to say something about having this ex-cop, and his wife, and another couple over for dinner. And maybe even a student from Thackeray who wanted to know what it was like to be a writer. I’d dropped by in the afternoon and Miriam already had the table set and everything.”
“Did he say who the other couple was?”
Lucy shook her head.
“What are you thinking?” she asked me.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think we have a pretty good idea what’s on those DVDs. I had it confirmed for me by your father’s ex-wife, Felicia.” I grimaced. “She hadn’t heard about what happened at the drive-in. I ended up being the one to break it to her.”
“Oh, God, that must have been awful. For her, and for you. You don’t think she was faking, do you? That she already knew but was pretending not to?”
I thought about that. “It seemed legit.” I smiled. “But I’ve been fooled by women before.”
That brought a smile to Lucy’s face, too. “So, if she really didn’t know, there wouldn’t be any urgency on her part to break into my father’s house.”
I nodded. “Anyway, she says that when she and your father split, he gave her any discs that featured her. She destroyed them herself.”
“Unless there were copies.”
“There’s that,” I said. “Sometimes I have nothing to go on but my gut, and my gut says she didn’t do it. But I feel differently about Clive Duncomb.”
“Tell me about him.”
“He acts like he’s head of the FBI instead of security chief at a small college. But when I brought up that something was taken from the house, he didn’t even ask me what it was.”
She let that sink in. “He already knew.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Also, he’s the kind of guy your father might have trusted with a key and the code. Being an ex-cop and all.”
“You’re saying my father, and Miriam, maybe they were having sex with this Duncomb man and his wife? And recording it?”
This had to be uncomfortable for her. It wasn’t exactly comfortable for me, discussing her father’s colorful sex life.
“Maybe,” I said. “One thing I’ve learned over the years is you simply don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. And I’m not just talking about sex. Husbands and wives, parents and their children, they treat each other differently in the privacy of their homes than they do when they’re in public.”
“I got a taste of that when I was in the classroom. The things small children would say to you. Things like, ‘My mom can’t volunteer for the school trip because my daddy pushed her down the stairs.’ And they’d say it so innocently.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“It’s all so ridiculously sordid. Maybe that’s not the word. I don’t care if people want to fool around or wife-swap or whatever. It’s a free country. I’m not like the Taliban — or somebody’s church for that matter — wanting to tell everybody how to live. But when it’s your own father... it’s embarrassing.”
“Sure.”
She went to take a bite of a cracker, then put it back on the plate. No appetite.
“I just need to know who it was. If it’s this Duncomb man, maybe I can make a personal appeal to him. Not even accuse him of anything, but just say, ‘Look, if you have those discs, please don’t ever make them public. Please destroy them.’”
I didn’t know whether that was a good idea, but said, “If he took them, and he took them to protect his own reputation, it strikes me as unlikely that he’s going to post them online, if you know what I mean.” I glanced up the stairs. “I’d say the chances of Crystal stumbling onto videos starring her grandfather are pretty unlikely.”
“Oh, God, the very thought.”
I ate another cracker with cheese, poured myself some coffee from the carafe.
“Oh, I should have done that,” Lucy said apologetically.
I took a sip, told her it was good. “You have to decide whether you want me to pursue this any further. I want to have one more look around your father’s house — you’ve hired my services for the whole day — and see if I come across anything else of interest, maybe take a closer look at his e-mails, but I don’t know how much further I can take this.”
Lucy considered. “Maybe another day or two?” She made it sound like she was asking for another sliver of cake. I sensed that she wanted a reason for me to come back here tomorrow, and the day after that.
“Why don’t I see what I learn tonight, and then we can make a decision?” I said.
“That sounds good. I can’t leave Crystal, so you’ll have to go to the house by yourself. I can give you one of my spare keys for the house, and the code is two-six-six-nine. Do you want me to write it down?”
“I can remember.”
We both stood, almost uncomfortably close. A kind of electricity seemed to be passing between us.
The phone rang.
“Just a second,” she said, detouring back into the kitchen.
“Hello?” I heard her say. “Oh, Martin. Martin, I’m so sorry.”
I poked my head into the kitchen.
“Hang on just one second,” she said. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked my way. “It’s Miriam’s brother. Martin Kilmer. He’s driving up from Providence.”
I raised my hand, a mini-wave. “I’ll be in touch,” I said softly, let myself out.
As I got into the car, I noticed something on the passenger seat. Several pieces of paper, stapled together.
I kept the door open to keep the dome light on and picked up the document. The cover page featured a drawing of a little girl walking through a forest at night. It was titled “Noises in the Night by Crystal Brighton.”
There was a yellow sticker attached that read: “NOT a comic book.”
I looked back at the house, to a second-floor window, presumably Crystal’s bedroom. She was silhouetted against the light, watching me.
Thirty-four
Randall Finley pulled his Lincoln into his home driveway, up next to a red Kia, killed the engine. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, listened to the ticking of the engine as it began its cooldown, then got out. He walked wearily to the front door, but did not get out his key. He expected the door would be unlocked, which it was.
He heard stirring in the kitchen.
“Mr. Finley?” a woman called out.
“Hey, Lindsay,” he said, walking down the hall, loosening his tie on the way to the kitchen.
“You look tired,” said Lindsay. She was in her late sixties, her thinning hair pinned tightly to her head. Her thin, ropy arms were busy wiping down one of the countertops. “Long day?”
“I should have called,” he told her. “Sorry to keep you here so long.”